With the warmer weather a man’s thoughts turn to……planning canoe trips!

ADK sponsored trip up the Oswegatchie River with a possible hike to Cat Mtn Apr 27-29

A bushwhack canoe overnight trip down the upper Kunjamuk River in May 19-20.

An overnight trip down the Tioughnioga River in early June.

An overnight trip up the Spy Lake outlet to Spy Lake.

The General Clinton Grand Prix Relay Race on May 27.

A multi-day, multi-portage Lows Lake-Oswegatchie River-Cranberry Lake-Lows Lake Loop around July 28th.

A Cranberry Lake or Susquehanna River fishing trip with Len or my brother.

A ~6 day Spanish River, Ontario trip August 11-19.

 Only 6 months after the course.

Folks

Sorry these diplomas are long overdue, and thanks to all of you for completing the LNT Master Educator course last September. You should have received your LNT Membership materials by now. If not, please contact the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics

At the 1983 NBA All-Star Game, Marvin Gaye stole the show with his singular rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” At the time, singing the anthem was for the most part a straightforward job — shoulders square, sing it straight like the hymn that it is. But for this game, Gaye took the anthem to a new level. Gaye’s one rehersal was bumpy. By this point in his life, Gaye was battling a serious drug addiction. And on game day, the singer was running perilously late. But then the lights dimmed, a syncopated beat machine was turned on and Gaye made history. One year later, Marvin Gaye was dead, shot by his own father. Thanks to NPR for the text and Youtube for the video – this is special. Marvin Gaye sings the National Anthem.

I have a bunch of computer activities on going tonight. I bought a new Western Digital USB drive as my Lacie Drive I use for an off-site backup went on the fritz. I got a 150gb that I am currently copying all my music, digital photos, maps, and personal files onto. I started with my 70gb of music that is not backed up elsewhere. It took 2+ hours to copy those file; I expect the rest to be copied overnight.
After years of using free firewalls (ZoneAlarm), free anti-virus (Grisoft AVG), free ad-aware and spybot software I bought Norton 360 internet security suite. It allows installation on 3 computers, which is perfect for me. The 1st installation was relatively painless as was the 2nd.  I haven’t found any nasty viruses or malware yet. Nonetheless, I’d made sure to mark this particular Boynton Beach computer repair service centre, because the onset of a virus can be quite unpredictable and would send the computer to oblivion. Maybe the old freeware was doing just fine.
Kathryn’s computer is being upgraded from Windows 2000 to XP so I can run Norton 360 on it.

I upgraded my version of WordPress, which runs this blog, to version 2.1.2.  It was easy and painless.

I have used Eudora for email since 1995, starting out on Macintosh and then over on PCs.  After reading the news of Eudora mail to be merged with Mozilla Thunderbird I purchased the last commercial release of Eudora thinking it would tide me over until the merge was complete and we would transition to Thunderbird.  I was further motivated by Eudora’s statement that by the end of March existing licenses were going to be down graded to Eudora lite.   In the past purchasing one licensed copy of Eudora permitted me to perform multiple installations; 3 PCs and 1 Mac.  The latest licensing arrangement allows multiple installations, the additional ones just don’t work (or tell you why).  I could access email via web mail I thought my Norton 360 was causing problems, until I used Thunderbird on one of the computers.

The latest version of Thunderbird looks a lot like Eudora, imports all Eudora settings and works like a dream.

Kathryn and her gal pals are headed to the Virgin Islands for a week of sun, snorkeling, reading, napping and relaxing.  They are all packed and head out at 3am in the morning.  Eric and I will be bachelors for a week.  Most nights are full – we are planning on going out to eat Wed night for our friend Bob’s birthday, Thursday night we will go swimming, Friday is open.  This weekend we are going to Schoharie and got invited to my sisters for a celebration of my nephew’s birthday – a real plus as Eric can play with his cousin Nathan.  Next week we will go swimming on Monday, my other sister is planning a visit for Tuesday night, Wednesday night is guys night out at the diner and Thursday is swim night.  Friday AM K will be home.   Tuesday and Thursdays Eric will be at pre-school and the other days he will be at his buddy Trevor’s or at the baby sitters.  Stay tuned………

My nephew’s daughter has been raising Boer goats, a meat goat, and expecting some young kids.  She has three total new births now and here is a picture of the 1st – Little Miss Snowflake.

I heard Click and Clack’s Car Talk show and was intrigued by their discussion of Car Practical Jokes.  They discussed one where a co-worker secretly kept filling another co-worker’s gas tank – completely disrupting their car mileage computations.  It prompted me to send in a story. 

Some number of years ago my co-workers and I installed two jacks under the rear end of a co-worker’s car, lifting “Steve’s” car marginally so the rear tires were minutely removed from contact with the ground. 

We faked a call from a customer giving an important demonstration by saying the software program wasn’t working and “Steve” needed to come over right away to fix the problem. 

“Steve” raced to his car, started it, put it in Drive and mashed his foot on the gas pedal only to have the car race in place.  We were watching from an office window as he put the car back into Park and repeated the sequence, abet a more carefully.  After the 2^nd attempt to leave he exited the car and began a walk around finally spotting the elevated tires and co-workers laughing hysterically.  

 Ed & family joined us for lunch, conversation and games on Sunday.

Over the past 24 hours we received 18″ of snow on top of all the previous lake effect snows. This was one of those shovel & plow twice days, just to keep ahead of the accumulating snow. You can see our snow is starting to add up. Look at the snow piled around our 4′ 3-board fence.

We went out and played on the snow piles before dinner. We have some 8′ piles where the snow has been plowed from the driveway. I took this picture at the end of our driveway looking at part of the snow pile – 4 year old child is shown for purposes of scale.

The snow piles are good for games of King of the Mountain and short, but fast, sled rides. Here Eric takes a ride as it is getting dark – the flash shows that it is still snowing.

Saturday I spent a couple hours shovelling snow around the deck, mailbox, oil tank access and paths for the dog to access the lawn. Kathryn took Eric grocery shopping and got Billy, Billie Jo and Dakota for Dakota’s year 2 birthday celebration. Below Dakota debates what to do with her candle.

Eric and Dakota work at puzzles on Dakota’s new play table.

Saturday evening we went to Brad Bennett’s 50th birthday party and caught up with a number of people we hadn’t seen in a while. Sunday Kathryn and I went to the SU vs. Saint John’s basketball game (SU 76-74).